


Things We Do in the Dark

by lifeonthemurderscene (NotAllThoseWhoWander)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Donnie Darko AU, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7118635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/lifeonthemurderscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard Way has a lot of problems. His parents are making him see a therapist, his younger brother keeps hounding him to join a shitty emo garage band, and he's always in trouble at school. </p>
<p>Also, a kid named Frank shows up in Gerard's bedroom almost every night and tells him to wreck havoc on the Way's suburban community. And everybody else keeps telling Gerard that Frank doesn't exist. </p>
<p>Suddenly, high school bullies and weird local cult leaders are the least of Gerard's problems.</p>
<p>(This is a Donnie Darko AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things We Do in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> donnie darko is pretty definitively one of Those Movies when you're a high school emo kid, so mixing up the way brothers and frank iero and ray toro with the movie doesn't seem too crazy. 
> 
> keep in mind that this AU is more based on the characters and themes in donnie darko, as opposed to the specific movie plotline. therefore, a jet engine doesn't fall into gerard's bedroom in this AU, but he still sees a kid named frank who everyone else says doesn't exist. content warnings for violence, some self-harm, underage sex, homophobic language, and general intense themes. 
> 
> comments and reviews are always appreciated!

**Chapter One**

 

Gerard wakes with a start. 

He's cold. That's the first thing that he notices, and then, slowly, the feeling of rough concrete digging into his shoulder blades. And then the smell of pine needles and dirt, and the sound of wind through trees.

He opens his eyes. The sky is white-blue, a cool early autumn sky. In the distance, a dog barks and then howls. 

He's sprawled in the middle of the road about halfway up Carpathian Ridge. 

"Shit." Gerard pushes himself upright and stands slowly, easing out the ache in his shoulders and upper back. The mountains and valley are still mostly shrouded in predawn clouds, but the sun is already cutting through the branches of the pine trees overhead, slanting thin and white across the road. Gerard rolls his shoulders a little as he walks up the road a few yards and bends over his mountain bike—five speeds, bought at a yard sale when he was in the eighth grade. He must've ridden up in the middle of the night; the bike's green metal frame is wet from rain or condensation, he can't tell which. 

Gerard rides home quickly, following the steep curve of the ridge road until it evens out at the edge of town. From a distance and at a little height, the suburbs are a thin sprawl of buildings at the base of the valley. Wide roads, houses set far back from the street, broad lawns. Up closer, Gerard can name practically every street and avenue, knows the owner of most businesses. His parents do, at least. Lately he's been avoiding people that he knows in public, afraid that they'll mention Doctor Schechter or how they've heard rumors about him getting into trouble at school. He's sure that Mikey talks to his annoying, bitchy friends about it. Gerard Way's fuckups have become a popular subject of conversation in Middlesex. 

His dad is doing yardwork when Gerard takes the corner going full tilt, barely clearing the sharp corner of the curb. The bike's frame rattles dangerously as he crosses the scrubby lawn. Mr. Way straightens up a little and watches Gerard screech to a halt in the driveway and push his bike aside. He doesn't say anything. Gerard leaves the bike tires spinning a little and goes inside. 

Mikey is sitting on the kitchen counter. He watches Gerard enter with a heavy, judgmental stare. 

"Where did you go last night?"

Gerard slams over to the fridge and opens it. He drinks straight from the plastic jug of orange juice, eliciting a sharp nudge from Mikey's foot. 

"Why do you care, anyways?" He shoves the orange juice back into the fridge and pulls a grotesque face in Mikey's direction. A few years ago, they wouldn't have been arguing like this. They used to watch cartoons on weekend mornings and stay out all day riding their secondhand bikes and stayed up late watching VHS tapes from the Blockbuster down on Main Street. Things change, Gerard guesses, but privately he knows that it's mostly his fault that he and Mikey fight all the time.

"Freak," Mikey says sullenly. He and Gerard stare at each other for a moment. Then Mikey says, "I just wonder where you go, Gee." 

There is something sad and hesitant in Mikey's voice. It's been a while since he used Gerard's nickname, or maybe since he said Gerard's name at all. 

"I know," Gerard replies. He can hear the sadness in his own voice. He shuts the refrigerator door only a little harder than necessary. As he turns to go up to his bedroom, he catches sight of the whiteboard duct-taped to the front of the fridge. Someone has scrawled, in unfamiliar handwriting, the words **_WHERE'S GERARD?_**

* * *

The thing is, Gerard doesn't remember where he goes at night.

It's only the fifth or sixth time this has happened, him jolting awake on a rural road in the early morning, so he's been unable to figure out any kind of pattern. No rhyme or reason. It just _happens_ , and Gerard doesn't know  _why_. 

Maybe it's the dreams that he's been having lately. Sometimes when he wakes up—in his own bedroom, blankets pulled up around his shoulders like he's trying to push something away—he can't shake the unsettling feeling that a moment ago he had not been alone.

As he strips off his pajamas and shoves them into the bottom of his closet, Gerard tries to remember how he'd gotten up to the ridge. He'd obviously biked from home; he can feel the familiar ache in his thighs and the back of his calves. He doesn't remember falling asleep. He's fairly certain that he hadn't dreamt. He usually remembers all of his dreams.

Downstairs, the front door opens and Gerard can hear voices carrying up his bedroom door. Pete Wentz, local soccer star and kind of a dick, is yelling something to Mikey about band practice. Gerard hears Patrick, who lives down the street and is surprisingly friendly and  _not_ a dick, tell Mikey to get his bass.

"Ask your freaky brother if he wants in, Mikey!" Pete shouts, loud enough for Gerard to hear through the closed door. He rolls his eyes. Pete has been hassling Mikey to ask Gerard to join their shitty emo garage band for months, which means that Mikey has been hassling Gerard to join their shitty emo garage band for months. Gerard really likes The Cure and Placebo and Nirvana, which he guesses are pretty fucking emo, but the thought of spending time around his younger brother's annoying friends and playing loud music is pretty undesirable. 

Anyways, Gerard doesn't think that he's that great of a singer. 

He waits until the front door slams shut before lying down on his bed, wearing his Superman pajama pants and feeling almost sick with tiredness. He falls into another dreamless sleep, only half-certain that he's alone in his bedroom, and wakes up in the middle of the afternoon with his room full of hot, almost white sunlight. 

* * *

 

It's early evening when Gerard goes downstairs and through the screen door, stands barefoot on the back lawn. Mrs. Way is painting her nails in a lawn chair next to the trampoline that Gerard and Mikey used to screw around on all the time—one time Mikey had dislocated his arm after an especially vigorous jump—and smoking a cigarette. She doesn't look up when Gerard comes outside. 

"Put that goddamn bike in the garage, Gerard Arthur Way," she says. 

"Fine," Gerard says, and puts his bike away as loudly as possible. His mother's exasperated sigh follows him back into the house. 

* * *

 

"I'm voting for Dukakis," Gerard says, and feels a distinct thrill of pride when the dinner table falls silent. His father's scowl deepens into something a shade heavier than a glare; his mother stares at her plate, nearly smirking. 

"Dukakis." Mr. Way scrapes his knife along the edge of his plate, drawing out a sound akin to nails on a chalkboard. Gerard fights the urge to grimace. "You think that he has any business running this country?"

Gerard is not particularly political, but he knows that his father likes Bush for president and that's enough to set him on the Dukakis train. Anyways, the guy is kind of creepy and skeezy and reminds Gerard of a used car salesman, and he thinks that it'll be an interesting freak show of an election. 

"Yeah," he says. "I do."

He doesn't. 

Across the table, Mikey rolls his eyes, like he just can't  _believe_ that Gerard is irking their father into an argument  _again_. 

"Well, when you have a family to support and Dukakis has screwed this country's economy up with his  _liberalism_ , you tell me how much you support him then." Mr. Way gives Gerard a matter-of-fact look, which Gerard really hates. 

"Yeah, I wouldn't vote for Dukakis either," Mikey says, maintaining smirking eye contact with Gerard the entire time. 

"Why?" Gerard fights the urge to kick Mikey's shins under the table. "You planning on knocking up that bitchy girl you're always hanging out with?"

"Gerard!" Mrs. Way snaps. "That is  _extremely_ inappropriate!"

Gerard figures that she means talking about Mikey having sex, because he's only in the tenth grade and has never had a real girlfriend as far as their parents are concerned. The bitchy girl that Gerard sometimes teases Mikey about isn't actually bitchy, she's just kind of intense and wears her school uniform skirt about three inches above regulation length, but Gerard has never seen them kiss or overheard them screwing or anything like that. For all he knows, they're just friends. 

"Shut up," Mikey mumbles. His ears are red. "It's not my fault everyone at school thinks you're a freak." 

"You're such a fuck-ass, Mikey." Gerard's voice is hard and sharp, enough so that Mikey actually  _grins_ sardonically. 

" _You're such a fuck-ass, Mikey!_ Go suck a fuck, Gerard." 

Mrs. Way says, "Boys! Language!"

Gerard edges a hysterical pitch into his laughter. "Tell me, how  _exactly_ does one suck a  _fuck_?" 

"You want me to tell you?" 

"Michael Way!" Mrs. Way says loudly. Out of the corner of his eye, Gerard catches their father's darkening glare. 

"Yeah, please do. Please tell me." He can't stop taunting Mikey just like he can't stop fighting with his parents just like he can't stop leaving the house at night just like he can't stop getting into trouble at school just like—

Mikey mumbles something under his breath and scowls at the tablecloth. 

Gerard mouths  _I'm all ears_ across the table. Mikey pointedly ignores him. 

"Gerard," Mr. Way says, and his voice is heavy with anger, "Leave the table right now." 

Maybe it's the medication, but as Gerard goes upstairs to his empty bedroom, he doesn't feel anger or frustration, just overwhelming  _nothingness_.

* * *

  _ **Wake up.**_

_**Wake up, Gerard.** _

_**Wake up.** _

He's shaken awake as if by someone with a strong, cold grip. The room is empty, silent except for the distant sound of traffic on the main street. Gerard is breathing hard. He feels weird and jittery, panicked. It must be the middle of the night. 

_**Come outside, Gerard.** _

He freezes up. The voice is a little deep, full of something knowing that actually scares Gerard. He sits bolt upright and inhales deeply. The room feels suddenly cold, a damp coldness that reminds Gerard of being underground. 

_**Come outside** _ **.**

He stands up. Pushes back his blankets and pulls a sweatshirt over his head. He feels like he's watching himself, like he's outside of his body. His hair, dyed hard black, is a tangle the color of India ink under the hood of his sweatshirt. He looks frightened and strange from this perspective.

The house is silent, full of that weird blue light that only seems visible in the middle of the night or very early in the morning. Gerard moves like a shadow down the stairs, stepping carefully in the places where he knows the carpeted wood will creak. Something, some unknown, unseen force, is pushing him through the quiet house and past his father, who is asleep in an armchair in the living room, the television broadcasting nothing but static, and through the front door and across the wet grass outside.

Gerard feels his socks soak through. 

The sidewalk is cold. The same kind of cold that he feels when he wakes up on the Carpathian Ridge road, a stoney and solid cold. He isn't surprised that the street is silent; it's a little eerie, though, like Gerard is the only person in the entire town. Maybe the entire world. 

He feels  _so awake_. None of the slow tiredness that he's felt during the day lately, after he takes his meds, or the dreamlike quality of his usual late-night bike adventures. This is real. Gerard knows it, feels it. 

_**Come closer.** _

_**Come closer. Gerard, come closer.** _

He keeps walking. Follows the unspoken voice—it echoes in his head, like someone shouting inside an empty stadium—across the lawn and down the street, down the middle of the street, down the middle of....

Gerard stops when he sees the boy. 

A figure, standing maybe ten or fifteen yards away. Right away, Gerard can tell that it's a teenage boy. Something in the posture, a practiced almost-slouch, is instantly recognizable. He's just standing in the middle of the road, staring at Gerard.

Gerard stares back. 

_**Come closer.** _

"Who are you?" His voice rises at an unsteady pitch. 

The boy is wearing a skeleton costume, a black and white jumpsuit that hangs off of his shoulders and down around his wrists. Gerard walks closer, slowly, hesitantly, every muscle and nerve in his body jumpy with fright. A veneer of panic colors the silent street. In the yellow half-shadow of a streetlight he can make out the boy's face. At first, he looks shockingly normal: shaggy dark hair, dark eyes. Then Gerard gets a little closer, and he sees that the guy's hair is cut short and bleached on the sides, and everywhere else let grow long and unkempt. A silver ring glints on the left side of his lip. His eyes are ringed with heavy circles, like he's exhausted or—

Gerard feels a flash of panic. 

"What are you?" 

The boy laughs a deep laugh, one that reverberates within Gerard's chest and ribcage. 

_**I've been waiting for you, Gerard.** _

They stand there in the middle of the street in silence. 

"What's your name?" Gerard edges a little closer, until he's standing close enough to reach out and touch the boy. He looks real, the boy in the skeleton costume. Gerard excepted him to look different. He almost says that, but bites his tongue. "Why can I hear you inside my head?"

_**Don't ask me, Gerard Way. You already know.** _

"What do I already know?" Gerard asks. The boy turns and starts to walk. At the end of the street he glances over his shoulder at Gerard.

_**Follow me.** _

Gerard begins to, doing so without thinking. As he nears the corner, the boy turns around completely. In the yellow glare of the streetlight he looks gaunt, haunted. 

_**Frank.** _

"What?" Gerard says, and he barely recognizes his own voice. 

_**My name is Frank.** _

 

* * *

 

"Gerard? Gerard Way?" 

He wakes up with a violent jolt and immediately narrows his eyes against the assault of harsh morning light. Not a mountain road this time, but instead the hard plastic-feeling grass of a golf course.

_Shit_. 

He's sprawled on the country club's golf course, a few feet away from the hole where golfers are supposed to hit the ball. Gerard doesn't really know; he doesn't understand golf. He thinks it's stupid and a total waste of time. His dad plays golf sometimes. 

"Son, what're you doing?" Doctor Monroe, the dentist who Gerard hasn't seen in over a year, is leaning on a golf club and staring at him. Mr. Phillips, who owns the supermarket on Main Street, is standing behind him. 

"Uh." Gerard pushes himself to his knees, then his feet. He's barefoot, wearing the same Superman pajamas and white t-shirt he left the house in the previous night. "Sorry." 

The two men stare at him. Gerard stares back.

"I'm gonna leave," he says. Mr. Phillips presses his mouth together into a kind of  _that would be best, Gerard_ smile. As Gerard is walking away, Doctor Monroe calls,

"No more sleepwalking on the ninth hole, huh, kid?" 

Gerard turns around, nods. 

"Tell your dad I say hello," Doctor Monroe shouts. 

Gerard just keeps walking. 

* * *

 

 

"Pete still wants you to join the band," Mikey says the next morning as they're standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Gerard is brushing his teeth, white uniform shirt unbuttoned, while Mikey combs gel through his hair.

"Well, I'm not." 

Mikey leans in close and fixes his collar, then watches as Gerard spits and rinses his mouth. 

"Maybe you should, Gee." That same sadness is in Mikey's voice again. "People might think you're..."

"What?" Gerard turns around, swiping his hand across the back of his mouth. "Less of a fucking freak?"

Mikey doesn't say anything.

* * *

Ray is already at the bus stop, kicking an old soda can around on the sidewalk with his hands shoved in his pockets. When he sees Gerard and Mikey get out of their mother's old blue station wagon, he straightens up a little.

"What's up, Ways?"

Mikey rolls his eyes and starts talking to one of his annoying tenth grade friends. Gerard slouches over to Ray. He and Ray have pretty much been best friends since middle school, when on the first day of sixth grade they rode the bus together and then kept hanging out because they didn't really have other friends. They both like comic books and music and sometimes smoking weed—when they can get it, which means Ray hassling his older cousin who lives in an apartment by the community college and works part-time at the record store in town—which means that their friendship is pretty comfortable and easy and great. 

Sometimes Ray's a dick, though. 

Sometimes Gerard is a dick, too, so he doesn't really mind. 

"Hey, Gerard." Mikey's annoying tenth grade friend says loudly, "My dad says that he saw you sleepwalking on the golf course yesterday. Wearing pajamas. Barefoot." 

"Fuck you," Gerard says. 

"It's only because of—" Mikey begins, but Gerard shuts him up with a swift kick in the shin. 

"You're not supposed to talk about it, dumbass." 

He means the medication, because Mikey isn't exactly hesitant to tell everyone and anyone about how Gerard's medication makes him do weird things, like sleepwalk and talk to himself. Gerard can't explain that it's not the medication, it just  _happens_ , and now that he can put a face and name to the voice it's even more bizarre. Mikey would never understand; other kids would never understand. Even Ray, who is totally into freaky stuff, would probably think that Gerard is actually really crazy.

"Want a cigarette?" Ray takes a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket. 

"Sure," Gerard says, and takes a cigarette when Ray slides a few out of the beat-up red cardboard pack. Then, to Mikey: "You tell Mom and Dad about this, you're fucking dead."

"Whatever," Mikey says sullenly. 

"Doesn't your mom smoke, anyways?" Ray asks, flicking the lighter. The younger kids watch them. Gerard feels a weird sense of pride in being the rebellious older students smoking at the bus stop. Everybody already thinks that he's a freak, anyways.

Gerard shrugs. He inhales deeply, then tilts his head back to exhale. Watching the smoke rise and curl against the blue morning sky, Gerard thinks about Frank. The name has been echoing around his head since Saturday night.  _Frank, Frank, Frank_. Like a litany. Like a song that he can't get out of his head, no matter how hard he tries. 

* * *

Doctor Schechter's office is always dim and smells a little like incense and cheap air freshener. Gerard sits on the edge of the couch while Doctor Schechter—who always says that Gerard can call him Brian, but that feels too informal and creepy—stares at him. He's holding a notebook.

"How is school going, Gerard?"

Gerard says, "Fine."

"What about the sleepwalking? Has it happened again?" 

Gerard stares at his sneakers. The laces are filthy. "Not as often as it used to." 

"Your mother told me," Doctor Schechter says, and writes something in the notebook. "That you've come home in the very early morning a few times this week. Were you sleepwalking, or sneaking out to see someone?" 

If he weren't irked by his mother's ratting him out to Doctor Schechter, Gerard might have laughed. The idea of him having, like, a girlfriend or something is completely ridiculous. The only person he would ever sneak out of the house for is Ray. 

"Okay," he says. "It's happened a few times. The sleepwalking, I mean."

"Are you having dreams? What usually precedes these, uh, episodes?" 

Gerard feels his mouth twist into a grimacing half-smile. There's no way that he's about to tell Doctor Schechter about Frank. 

"I don't know," he says. "I really don't know, Doctor Schechter. Maybe it's the medication you gave me."

Doctor Schechter stares at Gerard for a long time before he writes something down in the notebook. 

"Your honesty is important here, Gerard," he says after a while.

Gerard just stares back at him, the smell of incense and the dimness of the office suddenly choking him into a cold, hard silence. 

* * *

 

_**Wake up, Gerard.** _

Gerard opens his eyes. He isn't lying on the sidewalk or the golf course; he's lying in his bed, blankets tangled around his legs. 

"What?" He sits up a little bit. Frank is standing in the corner of his room, in the place where silver light falls through the shutters and slants across the floor. He's still wearing the skeleton costume. "What are you doing here?"

Frank smiles. It's a very eerie smile. It scares Gerard. 

_**You always know when I'm coming, Gerard.** _

"You always wake me up," Gerard murmurs. Up close, Frank looks young: Gerard's age, maybe a little older. There is something very familiar about him, something that feels weirdly comforting.

_**I'm sorry, Gerard. You'll understand why someday.** _

"Fuck off," Gerard says, but there is no animosity in his voice. He doesn't feel like he's dreaming. He's wide awake. "Why do you always sound like that? All echoey." 

Frank smiles again. It's a little less creepy this time. "I can talk like this, too." 

His voice is normal. Quiet and only slightly deeper than Gerard's. He sounds like half of the kids at school, most of the boys in Gerard's classes. Young and normal and  _real_. 

"Can I sit down?" Frank doesn't wait for Gerard to respond. He sits on the edge of the bed. Gerard feels the mattress dip under Frank's weight and finds it reassuring, solid. 

"Doctor Schechter keeps asking me about the sleepwalking," Gerard says. It feels weird, being this close to Frank. He's used to seeing him from a distance, appearing and vanishing like a black-haired ghost. "I think he knows about my meds." 

Frank turns to look at Gerard, his eyes wide and knowing in a pallid face. 

"Does he?" 

"I don't know." Gerard hugs himself. "I don't know about anything anymore, Frank." 

Frank reaches out and touches Gerard's arm. Gerard feels it like an electric shock, like the time he accidentally-on-purpose touched a live wire in physics class. He had thought that it would shock all the crazy out of him. It hadn't. 

"Gerard," Frank says. "You do know." 

"I don't."

In the silver light, Frank looks unimaginably knowing and a little morose. 

"Trust me," he says. 

Gerard opens his mouth to ask  _why_ , but he blinks and when he opens his eyes, Frank is gone. He barely sleeps that night, half-expecting and half-hoping to wake up and see a shaggy-haired boy standing next to his bed. He doesn't, and instead is woken from dreamless sleep by Mikey coming into his room and making a big deal about a missing uniform shirt.

"Get  _out_ , Mikey," Gerard moans, and pulls the blankets up over his head as high as he can.

* * *

 

That evening, as shadows stretch long and dark across the lawn and suburban street, Gerard sits on the curb for a long while. 

Down the block, he can hear the sound of Mikey and Pete's band practicing: drums and guitar and someone singing from behind a half-closed garage door. They probably really do need a singer. For now, or at least until they find someone who wants to sing, Patrick is doing vocals. Gerard has heard him; Patrick has a really good voice, like a jazz or soul singer or something, but he doesn't want to do it. Something about everyone watching him sing, and having to look at the crowd the whole time. Pete had suggested that Patrick should just wear a hat and pull it down really low over his face. Then he'd yanked Patrick's hat down so that it covered his eyes and bumped up against his nose. 

He can't stop thinking about Frank. 

Even in boring classes (every class except for English and science), when Gerard would usually zone out and think about, like, who from school he would potentially fuck if the situation called for it, lately he's been thinking about Frank. About that lip ring, about the dark ink curling out from underneath the collar of the skeleton costume that Gerard thinks might be a tattoo, about that  _look_ in Frank's eyes, at once horribly familiar and very, very foreign...

A neighborhood kid, William Beckett, who is a year younger than Gerard, rides past on his bike. 

"Hey, Way," William says. 

Gerard presses his mouth into a smile and watches William ride down the street and around the corner. He wonders, almost absentmindedly, what rumors William has heard about him in the school hallways, how many times he's called Gerard a freak because everyone else does, or because he really thinks that it's true.

He sits in silence for a while longer, listening to Mikey's band practicing down the street, feeling only half-real. 

Then he gets up and goes inside. 

* * *

 

_He's kneeling on hard, cold dirt. Barefoot. Maybe. Gerard is in a dream, or_ is  _a dream, maybe, but nothing is real he knows that much he knows—_

_—the house behind him is in flames._

_The fire is hot enough to feel even from where he's kneeling._

_He laughs. He doesn't know why._

_Then he's crying, hard, desperate and frightened and elated and—_

_And_

_And_

_The night sky overhead is huge and black enough to swallow Gerard. It will, he thinks. That is all that he knows._

_His hands smell like gasoline._

* * *

Gerard wakes up crying, his shoulders shuddering with the effort to silence himself. 

"Why did I do it, Frankie?" He reaches out, unsurprised when his fingers collide with a warm, solid shape. "Why did I do it?"

**_I don't know, Gerard._ **

He falls asleep curled up against the warm weight beside him. When he wakes up with tears dried hard on his cheeks, all Gerard remembers of the previous night is Frank's shape in the bed next to him. 

* * *

 

He holds his hands up to his nose hesitantly, worried about what he'll recognize if he does.

There, coating his fingers and palms, is the thick, unmistakable smell of gasoline. 


End file.
